I’m usually not into hyperbole, but last Sunday was one of the greatest days of my life. Yes, that’s right — I sat courtside for the Indiana Pacers/Houston Rockets game at Taipei Arena on Oct. 13. Allow me to put that in perspective. It’s not easy being a Pacers fan (because there are so few read more

All those 2012 movie blitzes bring us to this point — the top 10 films of 2012! Out of the 109 movies from 2012 (released in 2012, not necessarily watched in 2012) I have reviewed on this blog, these are the cream of the crop. To be honest, I’m fairly disappointed with this list. Looking read more

I had no idea The Wolf of Wall Street was a comedy until it won the Best Motion Picture in the Musical or Comedy category at the recent Golden Globes. Leo DiCaprio plus Martin Scorcese usually equal serious, violent, gritty flicks like The Departed or Gangs of New York, but this time, they’ve teamed up to give us one of read more

I’ll get this out of the way from the outset: The White Tiger is the best novel I have read in years. Not one of the best. The best. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a piece of fiction so addictive that I tried to read it every chance I had, to the point read more

You are browsing the Blog for doomsday.

As small pockets of civilization around the world celebrated their survival of the Dec. 21 Mayan apocalypse, the vast majority of normal people have angrily demanded to know how things could have possibly gone so wrong.

The world as we knew it was supposed to end at precisely 10:11pm (Australia Eastern Standard Time) on Friday, Dec. 21, 2012. Earth was supposed to be struck by another planet or an asteroid. Aliens (or apes) were supposed to attack. Time was supposed to stop, or the universe was simply meant to stop existing.

But instead, as the clock struck 10:12pm and everything remained as it had been at 10:10pm, anticipation turned to disbelief. And as the hours passed, disbelief turned to disappointment, before finally erupting into fury.

“What the hell? We were supposed to be teleported into another dimension!” said Francois Ancel, 54, who had camped out at the southern French town of Bugarach for the past six weeks. Ancel and his family of seven had heard about the town’s curious “upside down” mountain and had expected to be beamed into another world by sitting in a hole on the summit at the exact moment it was supposed to end for everyone else.

Unlike some of his fellow campers, who have left the hole in tears, Ancel said he has not given up hope and will remain in the hole for as long as it takes, noting that the Mayans may have miscalculated the precise moment of the apocalypse.

“The Mayans didn’t have smartphones, computers or even abacuses back in those days,” agreed Professor Chris Copeland from the New York Calculator Institute, who has urged everyone to remain calm and continue waiting. “A margin of error of three to five years is not unreasonable under the circumstances. I will give them the benefit of the doubt this time.”

Copeland also ridiculed Russian president Vladimir Putin’s “guess” that the world won’t end for another 4.5 billion years, based on the life expectancy of the sun. “There is no scientific basis for that claim whatsoever,” Copeland said.

However, Copeland’s assurance that “it could end at any moment between now and Dec. 21, 2017” has failed to quell the rage of former-believers, who have vowed to commence an anti-Mayan movement across the globe, beginning with the boycott of the now-half-priced Mayan calendars. Inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement, a small group of protesters have also reportedly initiated “Occupy Machu Picchu” at the ancient Inca site in Peru.

“We’re not going anywhere until the Mayans come down and give us an explanation, face to face,” said protester Geri Jingleberry, 34, from Texas. “They can tell me what to do with the 21,000 cans of baked beans in my basement bunker.”

In China, reactions were more subdued, as the majority of believers have disappeared after being rounded up by the Chinese government well before Friday.

“This hoax has rekindled my faith in the Communist Party,” said Kai Wanxiao, 29, who lives in the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing. “The party said the world wouldn’t end and the party was right. Long live the Communist Party!”

There were, however, reports in the eastern coastal provinces of Shandong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Liaoning of people asking for their money back after having donated all their assets to charity.

“I gave away everything I had to the less fortunate because I truly believed the world was going to end and everyone was going to die,” said Zheng Congming, 62, from the port city of Dalian. “Now that we have survived I would like my money back, thank you very much.”

The world’s leading Mayan expert and director of Apocalypto, Mel Gibson, said he could sum up why the Mayan prophecy did not come true in one word.

We’ve had plenty of scares before, be it Y2K or Nostradamus or some loony evangelical pastor in Texas, but this time a lot of people genuinely believe it because it’s supposedly from the Mayans. Chances are most of them have seen Apocalypto and know just how awesome the Mayans are and can never be wrong.

But as always, there are also people telling us everything will be OK. December 21 will just be like any other day, they say. The Mayan calendar actually goes on and on, but they just ran out of walls in that particular cave. D’oh.

NASA has reportedly also confirmed that there are no meteors or asteroids coming our way, so that rules out a Deep Impact (or is that Deep Rising?) or Armageddon scenario.

Not many people have mentioned the possibility of something like The Core happening (you know, that Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank movie about how the Earth’s core stops rotating) — apparently the science is a little off in that one.

Unexpected and rapid global warming causing a 2012 or The Day After Tomorrow scenario is still possible, right? Apparently not, or else world leaders would be in hiding already.

So that leaves us with some kind of unforeseen natural disaster (probably an earthquake) — though I understand earthquakes can be predicted to some degree these days and in any case it’s unlikely to affect the entire planet — or an Independence Day, Cloverfield, The Day the Earth Stood Still or War of the Worlds-like alien invasion. I personally believe that if it’s going to be anything it’ll be Godzilla, or better still, Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

All joking aside, all this talk about the end of the world coming has gotten my thinking. If it was really going to be the end, would I have done everything I wanted to do by this point in my life? The answer is of course no.

I have done some (admittedly rough) calculations and I believe I need (without concern for finances and a day-to-day job) a full year to catch up on all the movies I had planned to see, a year to read all the books I planned to read, half a year to watch all the TV series I want to see, half a year to play all the video games I’ve wanted to play, a year each for the two books I want to write, another six months for a screenplay, six months for travel and six more months to get into shape. That’s seven and a half years.

That’s not the time I need to do those things for the rest of my natural life, just the time I need to catch up to where I want to be right now.

Which brings me to the conclusion that if I survive December 21 I’m going to need to get a move on. With everything.